Feral Pigs and Rabid Bats

Wednesday, November 9th, 2016

Brazil has an unusual feral pig problem:

There have been feral pigs in Brazil for up to 200 years, research suggests, when a few domestic pigs escaped and went wild in the Pantanal region. But a large-scale, country-wide invasion can be traced back to the 1990s, when wild boars were imported from Europe and Canada for use in high-quality meat products. In Brazil, many farmers bred these boars with the domestic pigs that already existed in the country. Eventually, the government stopped permitting the importation of wild boars, and many of the interbred pigs were released — accidentally or intentionally — into the wild.

The feral pigs cause enough ecological and agricultural damage as it is, but now the authors of the new study are concerned that their continued spread could boost bat populations in some areas and contribute to a spike in rabies infections in people. This could happen in a variety of ways, they’ve suggested. While vampire bats have been known to bite sleeping humans and infect them directly, bushmeat hunters — and their hunting dogs — could also be exposed through contact with infected pigs.

And rabies isn’t the only concern either, Pedrosa added. Vampire bats are known reservoirs for a handful of other infectious diseases as well, including several viruses that can cause serious respiratory illness in humans.

They haven’t addressed the problem the way Texans have:

The Brazilian government has established a program allowing the killing of feral pigs, he noted, but added that rigorous restrictions on the purchase of firearms has kept the number of participants fairly small so far.

Rabid bats are a problem in Brazil:

In 2005, a spate of attacks on humans in Brazil made international headlines by causing 23 rabies deaths in two months and leading to more than 1,300 people seeking medical treatment for rabies.

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Today, the incidence of rabies infections in vampire bats varies by location — it tends to be anywhere from about 1 to up to 10 percent, according to the authors of the new paper.

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For the new paper, the researchers analyzed thousands of photographs and videos used to monitor wildlife in Brazil’s Pantanal region, a tropical wetland area mostly occupying the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the Atlantic Forest, which runs down the Atlantic coast. They found that, in addition to preying on livestock like cattle, the bats also feed on wild animals including tapirs, deer and feral pigs. The videos and photos from the Pantanal region suggested there was about a 2 percent chance that a pig might be attacked by a vampire bat on any given night. In the Atlantic Forest, this chance rose to 11 percent.

Comments

  1. Bomag says:

    A cautionary immigration story…

  2. Sheldon says:

    “They haven’t addressed the problem the way Texans have”

    Millions of feral pigs in Texas. Crossed with European wild boar and a dangerous and enormous animal. Professional hunters using the AR-10 needed to bring them down.

  3. Morris says:

    Pigs and earthworms often it is suggested also contributing to the demise of the American Indian. Both greatly changed the American woodland environment in a way detrimental to the traditional way of life of the American Indian.

  4. Isegoria says:

    Yes, feral pigs cause tens of millions of dollars of damage in Texas each year, which is why they have Tactical Hog Control.

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